Shelfology Book Pairing

by Marcus Aurelius

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Meditations offers a glimpse into mind, his habits, and his approach to life. . . . I think any reader would find something useful to take away from it.”—James Clear, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits “To me, this is the greatest book ever written. . . . It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization, and strength. . . . If you’re going to read it, you absolutely have to go with the Gregory Hays translation.”—Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Obstacle Is the Way “It is unbelievable to see how the emperor’s words have stood the test of time. . . . Read a page or two anytime you feel like the world is too much.”—Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Wall Street Journal Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life. Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. With bite-size insights and advice on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others, Meditations has become required reading not only for statesmen and philosophers alike, but also for generations of readers who responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. In Gregory Hays’s translation—the first in nearly four decades—Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy. In fresh and unencumbered English, Hays vividly conveys the spareness and compression of the original Greek text. Never before have Marcus’s insights been so directly and powerfully presented. With an Introduction that outlines Marcus’s life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style and construction of the Meditations, and the work’s ongoing influence, this edition makes it possible to fully rediscover the thoughts of one of the most enlightened and intelligent leaders of any era.

Plato

by Plato

Plato's Republic has long defied classification: it is a philosophical masterpiece; it is acute political theory; it is great literature. Although certain inconsistencies have been subsequently discovered, philosophical and otherwise, there can be no doubt that The Republic is a work of genius. It has as its central problem the nature of justice. In a word, what is justice? From this common origin, however, the book divides at a broader level. There is first of all the mundane, represented in the first books by the refutation of proverbial morality and traditional society. But the middle books belong almost exclusively to pure philosophy. In these Plato examines the figure of the philosopher, metaphysics, and epistemology, an extended investigation that culminates in the allegory of the vision, visibility, and the sun as symbol of the good, or justice. It not until the delineation of the famous "Myth of the Cave" in Book VII, however, that the two realms: material and ideal, polity and philosophy, historical State and ideal State, virtue and ethics truly come together. The image of the liberated prisoner forsaking the light, compelled whether by force or obligation?Plato would say duty?to rejoin his companions in the murky darkness of the cave, is perhaps the key to the underlying unity of The Republic. It is in the individual that the two realms meet. Plato's aim, then, was to realize social and political stability on a foundation of moral and spiritual absolutes by which every man may live.